Us and the Bottleman eBook

The Sea Monster was much further away than you might
suppose. When there was ever so much smooth,
swelling water between us and Wecanicut, the Monster’s
head still seemed almost as far away as before.
Somehow the water looked very deep, although you couldn’t
see down into it, and it humped itself under the boat.

CHAPTER VIII

Presently Wecanicut began to drop further away, and
then the Sea Monster loomed up suddenly right over
us, and Jerry had to fend the boat off with an oar.
We had never guessed how big the thing really was,—­not
big at all for an island, but very large for a bare,
off-shore rock. I should say that it was just
about the bigness of an ordinary house, and very black
and beetling, with not a spear of grass or anything
on it. When Jerry said, “My stars, what
a weird place!” his voice went booming and rumbling
in among the rocks, and a lot of gulls flew up suddenly,
flapping and shrieking. He held the boat up against
the edge of a rock while Greg and I got out. We
took the kit-bag ashore, and Jerry made the boat fast
by putting a big piece of stone on top of the rope.
There was nothing like a beach or even a shelving
rock to pull it up on, so that was the best we could
do. The boat backed away as far as it could, but
the rope was firmly wedged between the rock and the
stone so it couldn’t get away.

Of course we went first to look at the black cave-entrance.
Sure enough, a great flat slab had fallen down from
it and lay half in the water,—­we could
see scratchy marks and broken places where it had
slid. The cave itself was about six feet deep,
and very dank and dismal-looking. There was no
sign of there ever having been treasure, for nobody
could possibly have buried it, unless they’d
hewn places in the living rock, like ancient Egyptians.
We might have thought of that before, but of course
we didn’t honestly believe that there was treasure.
Somehow the Sea Monster didn’t seem nearly so
jolly and exciting as it had from Wecanicut. It
was so real and big, and whenever a wave came in,
it boomed and echoed under the hanging-over rocks.
We climbed around to the other side and went up on
top of the highest place, which was about three times
as high as I am. From there we could see the Headland,
very far away and blue, and Wecanicut behind us, safe
and green and friendly-looking, but a long way off;
and nothing else but a smeary line of smoke from a
steamer at sea.

“We named this place well,” I said; “it
is a Monster.”

“Brrrr, hear it roar!” Jerry said.
“The waves must be bigger, or something.
There weren’t any when we came out.”

We looked down and saw that the water was behaving
differently. Instead of being smooth and rolling,
there was a skitter of sharp ripples all over it,
and the waves went slap and frothed white when
they hit the rock. The sky had changed, too.
It was not so blue, and there were switchy mares’
tails across it, and the wind was blowing from Wecanicut,
instead of toward it.